Megaupload Case

Megaupload, founded by Kim Dotcom, has been operated for several years as a victorious cloud storage industry that permitted users to upload and download content chosen by users and supported by a Digital Millennium Copyright Act; Safe harbor provision. “Megaupload had its place in the Internet website as number 13 frequently visited with its 60 million registered users, 50 million daily visitors”(Summiers,2013). While operating and acting under safe harbor law, Megaupload started to become a suspect of U.S. government for acting as an illegal internet market. Even though Megaupload had its ownership in New Zealand, the U.S. government engaged with the company’s operations branding the case as an illegally accountable in a theory of criminal

Every time DMCA sent it notifications to Megaupload for the user’s copyright violations, Kim Dotcom responded quickly and gave copyright holders direct access to its servers to remove links that considered to be infringing. In addition, “Megaupload required each user to accept its Terms of Use prior to uploading any file to the site; including a prohibition against uploading any digital material or files for which the user did not own the copyright or was not authorized to have the files”(Summiers, 2013). As harder Megaupload tried to prevent any illegal actions, it could not guarantee the action’s of the users who went against the DMCA and uploaded illegal files. How could one prevent the circumstances of the user’s action and be able to protect the entire site from the violations and infringements. In addition, Kim Dotcom, as a founder of Mega upload, under safe harbor provision, has to be not liable as a service provider from its user’s illegal content equally similar to YouTube vs. Viacom case where DMCA approved YouTube’s legal statues and court granted its

“The U. S. Government manipulated Mega upload to leave certain materials in place while refusing to inform that they were supposed to be a target materials for their further investigation, and then they twisted the facts and used Mega upload’s cooperation with the U.S government as a direct evidence of criminal intent”(Jones, 2012). “U.S. government violated all the boundaries by refusing the fact that Megaupload had its ownership in overseas and the US Supreme Court made up a concept for the Mega upload known as “inducement” as violating copyright law which has not been found in any copyright law”(Masnick, 2012). Accordingly, it stated that “if the users of Mega upload were involved in direct violation, but nor the dependents, meaning Kim Dotcom, it simply uses the made up legal transitive property to pretend that they can hang the willful infringement on the dependents” (Masnick,